


Kill Thy Neighbor

by KEBAB_REMOVER



Series: Under Cracking Skies [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Character, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Multi, Multiple Shepards, Paragon Commander Shepard, Shepard Siblings, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KEBAB_REMOVER/pseuds/KEBAB_REMOVER
Summary: It's been a tough eight years since Lucas Shepard's parents were killed, his brother went missing, and he was forced to live with the 10th Street Reds in order to survive. The underworld of Philadelphia can be very unforgiving, and Lucas is fully aware of this. However, unbeknownst to him, he's being set on a path - a path into the darkness of the mind and the soul.





	Kill Thy Neighbor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered that I wrote a fic on fanfiction.net a year ago, and I also remembered that it was literal trash. So, I decided to rewrite it, make it much longer and somewhat more believable with better characters.

My parents always told me three things: that I was the smartest kid in my class, as a toddler I skipped over walking and went straight for running, and that they always loved my brother, James, and I. The first statement is true to an extent. While I do have an IQ in the high 140s, placing me in President Wesley Ryan High School's gifted program, there are other kids in the program with higher IQs. The second statement is very true. I've always loved running, and I've even become one of the fastest runners on the Track team. However, I've always doubted the third statement. If my parents truly loved James and I, then they wouldn't have made the decisions that ended with their deaths, made James go missing, stripped me of the life I could've had and forced me to live with the 10th Street Reds.

It's been a while since I've gone over what happened on June 6th, 2162. I've been repressing those memories for eight years, and obviously the memories have become muddled, but since it's healthy to vent every now and then, I might as well vent to you. It had been an average Sunday. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sounds from the Philadelphia skyline were rather quiet in a nice way. We had all just come home from church, and while Mom and Dad were napping upstairs, James and I were fooling around in the front yard. It's hard to think that I used to live in a middle-class home in a middle-class neighborhood. Anyway, James and I had been sitting in the grass and playing with a frog we had found when we both noticed a skycar landing in front of our house. Both of us were rather curious, James being ten and me being eight, so our attention shifted from the frog in our hands to the car that was now in front of us.

A man and a woman came out of that car. I don't remember much about what they looked like, but both were wearing suits and each had a hand in one of their pockets. Both briefly stopped and glanced at each other when they noticed us, but continued towards our house. They stopped in front of us, and they looked down at us. In a gruff voice, the man said, "Are your parents inside?" James and I glanced at each other, and then looked back up at them. "Yeah," James slowly said. There was silence for a few seconds. The woman spoke next. "Are they available right now?" I answered this time. "Yeah." The man and the woman looked at each other for a few moments, and then they both nodded. The man sighed loudly, and then said, "I think it would be best if you two found somewhere else to play while we... talk to your parents." 

As the two moved towards the house, James stood up. "Who are you?" he asked. The woman looked back and replied, "We're just some of your parents' coworkers. Please, go find somewhere else to play, we need some privacy." Looking back on it now, I know that that was a blatant lie. Neither James nor I had seen them before, as Mom and Dad usually invited everyone from their office over to our house at least once. But since I was only eight, I didn't really question it. But James knew that something was wrong. We walked away from the house and down the street for a while, but James grabbed my arm and dragged me down behind a car parked in someone else's driveway. We watched from a distance as the two odd people knocked on the door. Dad answered the door, and seemed surprised. He called Mom to the door, and they had a conversation with the two for a couple of minutes. Mom and Dad seemed to hesitate before inviting them in.

James and I waited. We waited for nearly half an hour. We didn't hear anything from the house. All we heard were birds chirping in the various trees along the sides of the street and the sounds of Philadelphia in the distance. That was when we heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot from the house. We'd played enough vid games to know what a gun sounded like. Another shot rang out. James and I were in shock. We couldn't remove our eyes from our front door. The two odd people came running out, pistols in hand, jumped back into their skycar, and drove away towards the skyline. In a few minutes, neighbors began coming out of their houses and the sounds of police cars grew louder and louder. James again grabbed my arm and we ran into the house, pushing past the crowd of people gathering in the front yard.

I tear up every time I think about the way my parents looked when James and I saw them dead. A single shot had been put in both of their heads. Dad was slouched over in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, his head laid on the table. Blood was spilling off of the table and onto the floor, where Mom's body was laying. Neither of us could keep looking. I turned to my brother, wrapped my arms around him, buried my face in his shoulder and cried. We couldn't stop crying. We kept crying as police took us away from our home, away from our lives. We stayed at the local police station for nearly a week before being put in an orphanage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this first chapter was rather short, but the next one will definitely be longer. Leave kudos and comments if you're enjoying the story so far!


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